Tonight on UPN at 9:00.
Veronica Mars can be a hard sell - the premise (teenage girl detective) sounds cheesy, and the season-long mystery arcs and dense plotting make it difficult to come in in the middle of a season. I admit this. But that's no excuse not to be watching the best show on television.
Outspoken Veronica Mars fans include Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, and Stephen King.
Joss Whedon writes
Season 1 works as mystery, comedy, and romantic drama, often simultaneously. But what elevates it is that in a TV-scape creepily obsessed with crime-solving, VM actually asks why. It knows we need our dose of solution as a panacea against the uncontrollable chaos of life's real mysteries. And it shows, feelingly, that having the answers is never enough.
This is why I feel this is a show for people here. Because it's a show for people who think and question and obsessively remember and link back to the inconvenient facts that others would have us forget.
In Veronica's world, brutal, ugly things happen and nobody really tries to find out why, because to do so would inconvenience the wealthy inhabitants of Neptune, the town she lives in. Sound familiar? It's not an overtly political show (at least in the sense of addressing current events, though there are little flashes of political humor, as when an email blackmailing a gay student is signed Rick Santorum), but it is about how much the wealthy can get away with, how unwilling most people are to question the official stories they are told about why bad things happen, and how deeply unpopular those who do question often become.
I defy you to find a show with more airtight continuity and seamless references to previous episodes. Or one with sharper dialogue. Or one that is so willing to let its protagonist be prickly and emotionally remote.
If you haven't been watching, you can either start watching right now and see if you can't catch up (the recaps at Television Without Pity can help out if you so desire). Or you can get the season one DVDs. But whatever effort you can make to get into Veronica Mars, this show is worth it.
More praise for Veronica Mars:
Again from Joss Whedon:
Mysteries are its central metaphor; Veronica solves little puzzles because she, like all of us, cannot unravel the bigger ones...She's a super-sleuth, but the show never forgets that her power is born of pain, and that the kids who don't need to see -- or avenge -- every secret wrong are actually happier and more well-adjusted. Yet our identification is always strictly with Veronica, the girl buffeted by the base duplicity of her peers and the unfathomable vagaries of her own heart.
And
The show is filled with deft, glorious wit. Creator Rob Thomas and his scribblers give VM more laughs than many sitcoms, and they never grate against the emotional brutality.
Turning to PopMatters' take on the show
Equal parts intrigue, drama, and humor, Veronica Mars is also a lesson book for the disenfranchised. Few tv series aim so high; even fewer succeed so well.
Or the Chicago Tribune
When it comes right down to it, the sharply written "Veronica Mars" is the story of a girl who lost her best friend and her mom in the same short span of time, and who may never get over either event.
Veronica Mars is on UPN Tuesday nights at 9 (this is a new night). Re-airings may change week to week, but currently it seems to be shown on Wednesday at 9, Sunday at 7, and maybe Saturday night as well.